David Fincher and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns have been working together on a movie adaptation of Jules Verne‘s classic novel, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Because both Fincher and Burns have been busy with other shit, not much has been said about this particular project in quite a while. So, Cinemablend decided to take the reins and see what’s the what.

“Because of the amount of pre-vis work that David would have to do we wodn’t probably start shooting for a little while later and David is so buried inDragon Tattoo, that’s where his focus is. For now I’ve done writing for both of them [The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea]. They’re sort of waiting to get cast and move forward.”

Their adaptation isn’t going to be a word-for-word translation of the book onto the screen:

Burns also confirmed that the scale of the project is “really big,” but don’t expect the movie to be the exact same story from Verne’s novel. Saying that there’s “very little” that goes directly from the page to the screen, he said that his job “isn’t to turn a book into a movie, it’s to be inspired by the book and then go write a movie.” The inspiration that Burns took largely come from the three main characters: Captain Nemo, French marine biologist Professor Pierre Aronnax, and master harpoonist Ned Land. “David and I had a really cool idea for the relationship between Nemo, and Aronnax and Land,” Burns said. “That’s really what we kind of got into. But I think it’s very, very true to the spirit of the book.”

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